2014 UFA targets: Benoit Pouliot

With the Stanley Cup playoffs now in the rearview, NHL clubs are getting down to the serious business of reshuffling the deck for next year. Around the league comes news of player buyouts (Ville Leino, David Booth) or contract renewals (Kimmo Timonen, Dale Weise) which make analyzing the impending Unrestricted Free Agent market something of a crap shoot. Modern practices in the salary cap era sees an increasing tendency for clubs to to re-sign their own (useful) players before they ever get to market.

Craig MacTavish alluded to this the other day when discussing the Edmonton Oilers off-season plans:

“I’d like to add four or five players — one or two through trades and two or three unrestricted free agents. This year there are not so many top free agents available. The guys who would normally be secondary targets are now the primary targets. It’s a good year to be a UFA.”

My Cult of Hockey colleague Jonathan Willis looked at the Oilers’ situation on defence the other day, and followed up with this profile of pending UFA Anton Stralman. But what about the situation at forward? MacTavish again:

“We’re trying to get bigger up front. We’ve got the toughest element to get (skill), but I think we can augment that with players who are bigger, stronger and more productive than what we’ve had.”

One possibility that checks all of those boxes is Stralman’s 2013-14 teammate, Benoit Pouliot. In making their run to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Rangers were riding a lot of players whose contracts have now expired. Among them are restricted free agents like club scoring leader Mats Zuccarello, power forward Chris Kreider, and centre Derick Brassard. The unrestricted group includes Stralman, gigantic checking centre Brian Boyle, and Pouliot. All will be looking for pay hikes after a successful season; even if Glen Sather buys out overpriced vet Brad Richards as expected, he’s going to be hard-pressed to get all these guys renewed.

Pouliot is a very interesting case. The 6’3, 197-pounder has signed five one-year contracts in a row, and with five different teams. His pay rate topped out at $1.8 MM (prorated) during the lockout season, and tumbled to $1.3 MM when the Rangers signed him on the cheap this past July. The 27-year-old more than covered that bet with a solid regular season (80 GP, 15-21-36, +10) backed up by an excellent playoffs (25 GP, 5-5-10, +8). All this playing third-line minutes, albeit with solid linemates in Brassard and Zuccarello for the most part. The mythical “third scoring line” was alive and well in New York this past season.

While that vagabond background is something of a red flag that will require due diligence from whomever signs him next, Pouliot is an intriguing player who brings several attributes sorely missing from the forward group here in Edmonton. He’s a big guy who plays a physical style (top 3 among Rangers forwards in hits in both regular season and playoffs) who is not shy about taking the play to the goal mouth. Witness his two goalie-interference penalties in the Finals, which by themselves are not good plays but certainly speak to his willingness to go where both angels and Oilers fear to tread.

Pouliot is not a penalty killer but has proven to be effective on the powerplay, primarily as a “net front presence”; again, a player-type the Oilers are sorely in need of. He led the Rangers with 7 powerplay goals this past season, adding just 1 assist which emphasizes his role at the edges of the blue paint. But at even strength he was a decent playmaker, with 20 assists to go with 8 goals. His 28 ES points matched the output of high-profile Rick Nash … at one-sixth the cap hit.

So, Pouliot was a good fit with the Rangers, but how did he do at his previous whistlestops? Pretty darn decent, judging by his stats. He’s scored 13-17 goals and 28-36 points in each of his past four non-lockout seasons, solid production for a depth forward in the Dead Puck Era. He’s also been a plus player on every team, posting a net +46 since 2009. His underlying numbers show some of that is good “luck” a.k.a. above average percentages, but he also has posted strong possession numbers wherever he’s been. Check out these selected stats from Behind the Net, starting with his role:

Consistent third line minutes, facing generally above-average competition (Corsi Relative version shown) since leaving Minnesota. Now for results:

As a scorer, since leaving Minny he’s consistently ranked around 2 points for every 60 even strength minutes. By way of reference, the Oilers had exactly two players achieve this level in the season just past, namely Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle. Two others, David Perron and Mark Arcobello, slotted in slightly ahead of the 1.79 P/60 that Pouliot managed in a poor shooting year in 2013-14. More interesting still are Pouliot’s strong Corsi ratings, especially relative to his own teammates; his various teams have consistently maintained significantly better possession when he’s on the ice than on the bench.

One suspects that after years of riding the proverbial rails, Pouliot will be looking to settle down with a multi-year contract somewhere. One can anticipate Sather negotiating hard to get him re-upped before July 1, but Slats has plenty of other irons in the fire. Should the former #4 overall draft pick (MIN, 2005) hit the open market there’s nothing in his résumé that suggests he’s apt to be choosy. The Oilers can potentially offer him a good situation, given their ongoing void of anything resembling a Top 9-calibre power forward; but what kind of salary offer would it take?

Larry Brooks of the New York Post has this to say about Pouliot’s value to the Rangers:

LW Benoit Pouliot: Two years in the $2 million-to-$2.4 million per range for the erratic winger who responded to coach Alain Vigneault’s early tough love and was an effective complement on the line with Brassard and Zuccarello, but who did take 10 offensive-zone penalties in the playoffs.

One suspects that figure might be on the low side if anything. At 27, he’s in a similar position to big Chicago wingers Brian Bickell and Viktor Stalberg a year ago, as profiled here at the Cult of Hockey Both subsequently signed for four years, with Stalberg moving to Nashville for a cap hit of $3 MM, Bickell staying in Chicago at $4 MM per. While both players delivered great value on their previous contracts, the jury is very much out as to whether their new pacts will prove worthwhile at their much higher pay rate.

Is Benoit Pouliot worth that kind of an investment? By MacTavish’s own estimate, some 80% of UFA contracts turn out to be bad deals for the club doing the signing. The alternative, however, is standing pat, a stance that is not going to fly in Oil Country this summer. The club has to at least consider “secondary targets” like Benoit Pouliot, and back it up with both term and dollars if they want to succeed in landing the big winger.

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